


the angel who fell from the stars

by batterytriplicate, ilvermoron



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Maximum Ride - James Patterson
Genre: A Town Called Mercy, Angel Imagery, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crossover, I needed this TO LIVE, Western, deserves love, let me have this trash thing, weird crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-19 15:01:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20330104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batterytriplicate/pseuds/batterytriplicate, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilvermoron/pseuds/ilvermoron
Summary: The TARDIS lands in Mercy, a quaint Western town with a grudge-holding Gunslinger lurking in the mountains. Freshly rescued from the nightmarish period of protecting Melody Pond at every corner of the universe, Max is only just rebuilding her relationships with her friends. The Doctor's anxious about why he keeps meeting her just to watch her die. The team faces off against the double-sided Kahler Jex while trying to uncover his connection to the monster and Max. And while the Doctor isn't telling Max the whole truth about her lost memories, but the Gunslinger might.





	the angel who fell from the stars

_ When I was a child, my favorite story was about a man who lived forever, but whose eyes were heavy with the weight of all he had seen. A man who fell from the stars. _

The girl in the leather jacket didn’t realize until too late that the sun’s rays were turning the ocean of desert into an oven. Shrugging it off her shoulders, she was left in a pair of jeans she liked to pretend were ripped on purpose and a sky-blue t-shirt. She considered, momentarily, adjusting her lopsided braid, but left it for now.

She knew her sense of direction sometimes took a hit after time travel, but this was Earth, and this was altogether too similar to Death Valley to be anywhere other than West Texas. This definitely was not Mexico, like she’d been promised.

“Doctor!” She groaned, stepping back inside the time machine she’d just exited, “You screwed up. We’re definitely still in the US of A.”

He appeared from beneath the glass floor, hair sticking up every which way like he’d been electrocuted. “Are not!” He protested, taking the stairs with heavy footfalls as if his false confidence would make him right. He turned on a screen above the console and read it, eyes narrowed as if it would lie to him.

“Are too,” Max countered, coming back up the stairs and ditching her jacket on the pilot’s chair to her right. “Trust the mutant.”

“Trust the mutant on what?” Amy asked, appearing from the hallway and rhythmically skipping down the stairs. Upon reading Max’s expression and the Doctor’s failing attempts not to appear embarrassed, she concluded, “We’re not in Mexico, are we?”

Max, expression entirely too smug for her own good, waited for the Doctor’s humbling reply to the red-haired girl.

“No,” he relented, then immediately lit up again. “But! If we’ve ended up here, then something’s drawn us to this time and this place. So is it really a mistake if we still have fun?”

“Yes,” Max and Amy replied in tandem as Rory emerged from the hallway.

The Doctor sighed, pretending to reprogram the TARDIS coordinates. “Well, I suppose we can head to Mexico… potentially missing out on whatever adventure fate’s drawn us to…”

When he glanced up, Max was avoiding his eyes, but Amy was clearly reluctant to leave. She turned to the younger girl. “You know, Mexico isn’t going anywhere. At least, that we know of. Maybe this is just a pit stop!”

Rory opened the TARDIS doors and immediately grimaced, shielding his eyes. “Sunglasses are going to be required this time around.”

Amy still pleaded with Max, ensuring that she wasn’t going to flinch away before putting her hand over Max’s. “If it’s boring, we’re gone. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

“You’ve got it, Pond,” he confirmed, joining in Amy’s pretense that the decision was up to Max whether they left or stayed. In a way, it was; walking into something potentially dangerous without their very own fighting bird girl wasn’t their wisest decision.

After a moment, glancing between Amy and the Doctor, Max relented. “Okay, fine. But if we end up in another museum, I’m rioting.”

Long story short, after five minutes’ walk through the desert and plenty of snarky complaints from the youngest member of the group, they didn’t end up in a museum.

“Mercy,” the Doctor read from the sign in front of the town that seemed to exist straight out of a Western movie. Houses in shades that seemed to blend into the ochre sand and dusty open sky rose up from the expanse. “Eighty-one residents.”

As the quartet gazed in at the town like children at a toy shop window, Amy looked to the ring of objects at her feet that seemed to encircle the entire town. “Look at this,” She said, gesturing to the objects. “It’s a load of stones and lumps of wood. What is it?”

He squatted beside the piles and scanned them with his screwdriver, reading the results before bouncing back to his feet. “It’s a load of stones and lumps of wood,” he concluded surely, getting a half-smile from Max. He promptly stepped over the boundary, and Max half-expected something to explode. 

She knew he said the boundary meant nothing, but something pricked at the back of her neck. Maybe it was old paranoia, the post-traumatic stress Rory had told her she would likely always deal with, but something told her this was real. As Amy sighed at the Doctor’s hubris, Max looked back over her shoulder, scanning the horizon for someone watching her. Even with raptor vision, she found nothing, but somehow, that didn’t ease her nerves. Maybe whoever was watching her was even better at being invisible than she was at searching for them.

Rory glanced towards Max, who seemed suddenly on edge. He’d learned enough about her to know that she was right-- sometimes they should trust her instinct. She had a way of sensing things they didn’t. Instead of calling Max out on her apparent anxiety, he simply found another reason to retreat. “The sign does say ‘Keep Out’,” he pointed out warily.

“I see Keep Out signs as suggestions more than actual orders,” the Doctor explained, flapping his hands as he spoke. “Like dry clean only!”

And with that, he turned on his heel, leaving a semicircle in the sand. Amy looked to Rory momentarily, shrugging, before stepping over the border. 

Rory crossed, too, but didn’t follow his wife as she hurried after the Doctor. Instead he turned back towards Max, still lingering outside the border. “Everything okay?” He asked, well aware that if anything truly was wrong, she wasn’t going to admit it in front of anybody until she was ready.

Apparently, that time hadn’t come yet. Or maybe, she was just imagining the foreign eyes on her back. She scanned the rocky horizon once more before blinking, allowing her vision to readjust back to closer objects. Max looked back towards Rory, managing a nervous smile. “Yeah, I’m good,” she decided, trying to convince herself. Ignoring the tension in her chest, she stepped over the logs and stones and entered Mercy.

They were about twenty feet behind Amy and the Doctor, who had paused outside a post office. The Doctor scanned a light pole in front of it confidently, like he’d spotted the difference in a newspaper challenge section. Rory and Max jogged up behind them, Max catching the gaze of a little girl watching her from a second-story window across the street.

“What’s wrong?” Rory asked.

“It’s an electric street lamp,” Max stated plainly, turning away from the little girl and back towards the light. 

“You’re right, it is,” he agreed, turning back towards her. She recognized the look in his eyes; he’d looked at her like that for the first few weeks after she’d joined him and his friends. This was a test. At first, she’d failed a lot. But this? Easy.

“But…?” He prompted.

She sighed wearily. “It’s too early, isn’t it?”

She actually had no idea, but she’d gotten used to the kind of questions he’d ask her and the kind of answers he wanted. Nothing she wouldn’t know. Nothing she couldn’t guess.

He beamed at both her and the mystery. “Exactly. Electric street lamp, about ten years too early.”

Amy nudged her with a proud smile, and Max failed to pretend she wasn’t just a little bit proud of herself. Maybe whatever paradox the Doctor had locked onto was what was making her spidey senses go a little haywire upon entering the town.

Maybe it wasn’t.

“It’s only a few years out,” Rory said, only supporting Max’s latter thought. What did slightly early electricity have to do with being watched from the mountains?

“That’s what you said when you left your phone charger in Henry the Eighth’s en-suite,” the Doctor quipped, and Amy bit back a smile at Rory’s expense.

As she looked up at the light again, she saw a face watching from the third-floor window. It wasn’t smiling.

“Doctor,” she called after her friend, who had already started off towards the sound of saloon music. Something about this town was beginning to bother her.

“Anachronistic electricity, Keep Out signs,” the Doctor began to list off, “aggressive stares-- has somebody been peeking at my Christmas list?” He sounded entirely too gleeful for the chill that even Amy was beginning to feel at her spine, the chill that kept Max’s wings tightly held against her back. If it weren’t for the perception filter the Doctor had worked over her TARDIS key, worn on a long chain around her neck, her wings would’ve been obvious to everybody watching now that she’d ditched her jacket. Although the sun shone off the short feathers at the tops of her wings, she still felt the cold in the pit of her stomach. Something here was wrong, more than the electricity.

“Doctor--” Amy said again, but failed to keep her friend from swaggering into the crowded saloon like he owned the place. The woman at the bar cocked her brow at him as he leaned on it, a toothpick in his mouth. The music and conversation in the saloon immediately ceased as the four entered the building, and Max immediately prepared for a fight as a boy hardly older than her let his hand drift toward his gun.

“Tea,” the Doctor said, purposely gruff, and Max had to bite her lip to keep herself from snorting. He maintained the tough facade, although it fit about as well as his highwater pants. “But the strong stuff. Leave the bag in,” he said, like she would be likely to protest--  _ please, no, not the strong stuff! _

Instead, she remained stoic, entirely unimpressed as the Doctor managed to get the toothpick wedged vertically in his mouth. 

“What’re you doin’ here, son?” She asked, southern-accented voice cutting and cold.

“Son!” The Doctor crowed, clearly not sensing her quiet aggression. He leaned on his elbow on the bar, and the woman mimicked his motion, arcing her body slightly away from him. “You can stay,” he said cheerfully. She didn’t seem interested.

The sound of a chair scooting back on the old wooden floor startled Max enough to curl her hands into fists. Rory, knowing full well this adventure would reach an early and ugly conclusion should she go all avenging-angel on the small western town, extended an arm in front of her. She would’ve minded if it had been anyone else telling her to heel, but Rory didn’t imply that she wasn’t capable. He reminded her that maybe there could be other methods to winning aside from punching people.

The man who had stood wore a black suit and hat, seeming dignified as he hooked his thumbs beneath the lapels of his coat. “Sir, might I inquire who you is?”

“Of course!” The Doctor chirped, completely ignoring the growing tension in the room. “I’m the Doctor, this is--”

Before he could get another word out, everyone in the room stood up. Max flinched at the sudden noise, already creeping towards the swinging doors. Although no one in the room stood half a chance against her, she wasn’t entirely sure taking them all on at once with Amy, Rory, and the Doctor present would be her best option.

“See? Manners!” The Doctor said, looking at Amy and Rory, both of them seeming to shield Max from the rest of the room. Amy thought it funny, as the youngest boy present looked in Max’s direction, that he probably thought they were acting in protection of Max.

_ If only he knew how quickly she’d knock him flat on his back and wipe the floor with him. _

Max, sensing the dam of tension about to break, ducked beneath the swinging doors and hurried around the back of the saloon. She wasn’t even sure if Amy and Rory noticed her slip away, which was exactly what she wanted.

And in the next ten seconds, she was right. The masses came storming out of the saloon, bearing the Doctor aloft. She was suddenly reminded of the time he’d told her he’d crowd-surfed at a Beatles concert and that’s where the trend started. This time, though, his smile seemed out of place with the aggressive sounds of the masses.

She trailed behind them, watching Amy and Rory struggle against their respective captors. Still, Max hesitated, biding her time and taking advantage of the available spectacle to slip unnoticed along the sides of buildings parallel to the angry mob.

They threw the Doctor back across the border with a grunt, and he landed hard on his shoulder in the dirt. She winced sympathetically, but he sprung to his feet in a moment, immediately taking a step forward towards the border.

And then the guns were raised, all aimed directly at him.

Max would’ve been more concerned about the revolvers if the heat waves rising off the sand in the distance hadn’t warped, a dark figure emerging out of nothingness. She felt the chills down her spine again, sure that this was who had been watching from the mountains. He took a few steps in their direction, then disappeared again. Max crept closer to the border in his absence. Now the entire mass was facing away from her, only the Doctor seeing her as she slowly opened her wings a little. She thought that maybe, if she flew to the city’s sign above the mob, she could knock it down; an appropriate distraction, big enough to give the Doctor a shot to slip away.

He met her eyes with the barest shake of his head, and she pulled her wings against her back again. Maybe he had a plan? The man in the dark clothes came even closer.

“Oh, God,” said the man in black, “He’s coming.”

“Preacher,” said the youngest boy, hand slightly shaking. “Say something.”

“Our father, who art in heaven…”

The dark figure appeared again, much closer this time. The Doctor glanced over his shoulder, seeing him, and took a startled step towards the border again. He was met by the sound of three dozen guns being cocked.

Max suddenly doubted that he had any semblance of a plan at all, only predicted her likelihood to get shot saving him. She might’ve thought it was a sweet sentiment if he didn’t have a better plan.

“...Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done…”

A gunshot shattered the apprehensive quiet, and Max wasn’t the only one who flinched at the sound this time. The crowd parted, making way for a man with a great mustache to walk through the center. “You, bowtie--” he said, gesturing to the Doctor. “Get back across that line.”

He pulled back his jacket as he placed a hand on his hip, revealing a golden star that identified him as the town marshal. “ _ Now. _ ”

The Doctor hurriedly jumped back across the border, turning to see the dark figure uncomfortably close to the town. Once he was safely returned within the border’s confines, the figure stopped his advance, then disappeared in a shimmer of heat waves.

The youngest boy lowered his gun somewhat reluctantly. Max began to emerge from the shadows, still scanning the desert for the figure. Something about him wasn’t  _ right _ , and that was ignoring the fact that he traveled by dimensional jumping.

“Isaac,” the young boy protested, “he said he was a doctor. An  _ alien _ doctor.”

“That a reason to hand him to his death?” Isaac asked calmly, hands still on his hips. He seemed hardly fazed by the disappearance of the desert figure, and Max immediately decided that she liked him.

The boy, however, didn’t stop his pleading. “But, Isaac… it could be him!”

Isaac was understanding, but unyielding. He looked from the boy to the Doctor and said, “You know it ain’t.”

He turned away, leaving everyone in a stunned silence. As he passed Amy, he nodded respectfully with a polite, “Ma’am.”

The masses began to disperse, and Isaac looked to Rory. “I think you should come with me. All of you.”

Rory nodded, Amy following him, the Doctor trailing a bit behind. Max lingered in the shadow of the building, debating going out into the desert herself to find some answers. The second the thought crossed her mind, Isaac called, “The kid, too.”

She looked up to see him looking back at her, and couldn’t help but feel a little impressed that he’d spotted her.

Yeah, he was cool.

“What was that outside?” The Doctor asked once the group was settled inside the marshal’s office. Amy and Rory flanked him while Max traversed to the opposite side of the room, facing the door.

Isaac was leaning back in his chair, but not kicking his feet up on his desk. In Max’s completely unbiased opinion, he was perfectly avoiding being an asshole without losing any of his cool factor. “The Gunslinger. Showed up three weeks back. We’ve been prisoners ever since. See that border line stretching ‘round the town? Woke up one morning, there it was. Nothing gets past it, in or out. No supply wagons, no reinforcements. Pretty soon the whole town’s gonna starve to death.”

Max wondered if maybe that’s why the TARDIS brought them here; she could likely fly in and out of here without the Gunslinger ever noticing her. Even if he did, she was fast, and she doubted he’d be able to catch her anyway.

“But… you let us in,” Rory pointed out.

Max cocked an eyebrow, understanding why. “We don’t have any food with us, Rory. We’re just four more empty bellies, and now everybody dies faster.”

Isaac nodded in acknowledgement in Max’s direction. “Smart kid you got there.”

Max allowed herself the slightest smile of pride. The Doctor made a mental note to tell her how clever she was more often-- or, even better, show her how clever she was. She deserved to smile more often.

“Nothing crosses that line that could help us survive a day longer,” Isaac summarized, studying a scratch in the corner of his desk.

The Doctor refocused on the task at hand, feeling a tickle of curiosity bring him back to the present. “What happens when someone steps over the line?”

Isaac tossed him a cowboy hat with a neat hole shot right through the top. Not a drop of blood tainted it-- Max realized, suddenly, what a formidable opponent this Gunslinger might be. She still couldn’t place exactly why he cast a deep and dreadful shadow in the depths of her gut.

“Not a very good shot, then!” The Doctor taunted, and Amy had to force herself to close her eyes to avoid rolling them.

Isaac blinked once, unamused. “He was aiming for the hat.”

The Doctor looked offended. “He shoots people’s hats?”

Max appreciated how little Isaac seemed to respond to the Doctor’s thickheaded inquiries. “It was a warning shot,” he deadpanned.

The tone of his voice became so intensely familiar for a second that Max felt a little weirded out before she was able to place it--  _ Fang. _ That same unfazed, unmoving kind of humor, the kind that was so unique to him. Isaac had the same kind of demeanor. No wonder she liked him so much.

“Ah, no,” the Doctor nodded, finally understanding. “Yes. I see.” He handed off the hat to Amy, as if to show her the bullet hole in it. She hardly gave it a glance and passed the hat to Rory, who, in turn, handed it to Max.

Max held it for a moment, studying the perfect missing circles through each side of the hat. “Odd kind of holes the shot left, can’t be regular bullets,” she observed, then gave the hat back to Rory.

He gave it to Amy again, who had a follow-up inquiry. “What does he want? Has he issued some kind of demand?”

And back into the Doctor’s hands the hat went.

Isaac sighed wearily, as if he’d answered the question a million times. “Says he wants us to give him the alien doctor.”

Amy, Rory, and Max all shot their eyes sideways at the Doctor, who turned to face the three of them. Like that, they formed a sort of huddle, where they could speak less obviously. 

“But that’s you,” Amy deduced. “Why would he want to kill you?”

“Unless he’s met you,” Max tacked on the end, and Amy playfully smacked her wrist.

Rory was also confused, and ignored Max’s jab. “And how could he know we’d be here?  _ We _ didn’t even know we’d be here.”

Realizing their exclusion of Isaac was a bit rude, Amy turned back to face him. “We were aiming for Mexico. The Doctor was taking us to see the Day of the Dead festival.”

Isaac cocked a brow. “Mexico’s two hundred miles due south.”

Max perked up. “This is Texas?”

“Of course,” Isaac said, seeming a little bit proud to claim it. “We’re pretty far west out here, but we still manage to keep up with the-- uh, metropolitan areas.”

“Oh,” she said, still intrigued. She’d never been to Texas, and hadn’t realized that until she’d ended up here. Was the whole thing this dusty and… well, Western? It was just like the movies. She suddenly felt a call to explore the movie set of a town.

“Well, that’s what happens when you get toast crumbs on the console,” the Doctor grumbled, elbowing Rory.

Max blinked a few times, readying the pleading eyes she’d learned from Angel, and turned to the Doctor. “Can I go look around? I’ve never been to Texas before.”

He looked immediately suspicious, but his mind was preoccupied with other things. Keeping Max from getting bored was likely to help him in the long run. He relinquished his suspicions and nodded. “All right, but don’t cross that border line.”

Max beamed, turning on her heel to go.

She was already halfway through the swinging doors when he called after her, “And don’t start any trouble!”

“No promises!” She shouted back, still smiling. Now that she was on her own outside, the sun felt more welcoming that glaring. If there weren’t a deadly alien Gunslinger in the desert hungry for blood, she’d be tempted to take flight. This sunshine and the warmth of the sand below would feel like heaven on her wings. While time travel required all her oddest strengths and forced her to utilize her strangest talents, it was a bit light on the flying sometimes. She’d hate to get out of practice.

So no flying, at least, not yet. Max still couldn’t resist shielding her eyes with a free hand while her other cradled her leather jacket, head tilted up at the clear blue sky. Her heart ached to be up there with the absence of clouds.

“Hey, you,” an accented voice beckoned her. 

Max lowered her gaze to see the boy from earlier, the young one. He was leaning against the front porch rail of the neighboring building to the sheriff’s. He had one of those faces straight out of an old-timey movie, and held an unlit cigar between his teeth. Max almost asked if it was a metaphor for something, but knew he wouldn’t understand. She was a few decades too early, maybe even a century. She wasn’t exactly sure where-- or, more accurately, when-- she was. 

The boy jutted his chin towards her legs. “You dressed like a boy on purpose?”

She scowled. “Only if you did your hair like a girl on purpose.”

It was a weak insult, but seemed to strike a chord with him. He self-consciously ran his fingers through his hair, making bits of it stick up. Once it was what he considered fixed, he targeted her again. “Your voice. You ain’t from around here, are you?”

“Nah.”

“Well, where  _ are _ you from?”

Max paused, thinking. A lab in Arizona? A house in Colorado? A time-traveling porta-potty with an affinity for Britain? “Basically, everywhere,” she concluded.

The two teenagers regarded each other in silence for a long moment, the only sound the whistling of the prairie wind through the space between buildings. The afternoon sleep had set in for everyone but those who stood too close to the newcomers, and now it seemed the whole town had taken cover from the sunlight save for Max and the boy.

He removed the cigar from his mouth and held it in his left hand, stepping out of the shadow to offer Max his right one. “I’m Walter.”

She studied his extended hand, weighing her options, before shaking it. “I’m Max.”

“Ain’t that a boy’s name?”

“Ain’t that a man’s cigar?” She countered, mimicking his accent.

Walter, however, seemed genuinely struck by the statement. Not that she cared.

“This was my dad’s last one,” he explained, tucking it in his pocket. She kind of knew where that statement was going to end before he even continued. “He’s dead now. The war.”

“Which war?” She asked, knowing she wouldn’t recognize it anyhow, but the Doctor had told her to start trying to pay attention. Plenty of humans would kill to watch history unfold the way she did; the least she could do was learn from it.

Walter laughed shortly. “You’re an odd duck, Miss Max.”

“Just Max,” she corrected him automatically. “Like you said, I’m not from around here. We don’t keep up with the times that well where I’m from.”

“I thought you said you were from everywhere,” Walter retorted playfully.

She shrugged. “I thought  _ you  _ were focused on this whole alien doctor thing.”

Walter made a noise that seemed to illustrate his detachment to the whole ordeal, although Max had seen the bloodlust in his eyes when he’d pulled a gun on the Doctor earlier. He was putting on a show for someone, she just wasn’t sure who yet. He tilted his head towards her, lowering his gaze to the dust below. “What can I say, I’m easily distracted by pretty girls.”

Max had to bite her lip to keep from exploding into laughter. She was being hit on by a guy who was either dead or old as dirt by the time she was born. Once she regained her composure, she responded, “You’re just saying that because you’ve never seen a girl wearing pants.”

“Maybe so,” Walter laughed, starting to walk towards the center of town. He didn’t seem to care that it was deserted. “My point is--”

“Oh, so you have a point now?” Max jabbed. “I thought you just liked lurking behind the sheriff’s office like a creep--”

“Max, girl from everywhere, would you let me buy you a cream soda?” He asked, a sparkle in his old-time-movie eyes.

She weighed her options. On one hand, she’d only just met Walter, and back home, Fang appeared to be trying to mend his relationship with her. On the other, she was still super-mad at Fang, and they  _ were _ still broken up, and Walter wasn’t the worst guy she’d ever met in her life, and a cream soda would be fan-freaking-tastic right now…

“Yes, I would,” she decided, and Walter grinned at her, offering his arm. She waved a hand at him, gesturing for him to lower it. “I don’t need to be dragged there, I’ll just follow you.”

“I was just being polite,” Walter laughed.

Max shook her head. “You never know. I’ve seen naughty things happen to girls who take a boy’s arm on the first date.”

Walter’s eyes laughed, and Max’s eyes widened as she realized what she’d said. “So this is a date, is it?” He asked.

Max, for lack of saving her pride, started walking. This way, she seemed capable  _ and _ he couldn’t see her pink cheeks. “If you play your cards right, it might be.”

“Soda shoppe’s this way,” Walter said, not having moved from his spot.

Max turned on her heel and started walking the way Walter was leading, and neither of them mentioned her initially wrong guess at a direction.

Once seated in the soda shoppe, Walter ordered himself a grape soda and, after a bit of back-and-forth, Max settled on cream soda. The pair of them were the only two in the place, aside from a bored waitress and a cook in the back who was burning the homemade ice cream cones. Max couldn’t tell if Walter was staring at her on purpose or was just terrible at hiding it.

She took a sip of the soda-- it tasted nothing like how the canned stuff did back home. That was sweet, but syrupy, and this was lighter and less manufactured. Max adored it, and it showed on her face.

Walter laughed when she slurped up half the soda in one go. “Thirsty?”

She shrugged, stirring around the ice. “Texas is hot.”

“Yeah, and water is wet,” he deadpanned.

Max snorted. “Is it?”

And so began the ‘ _ is water wet’ _ debate between the two most volatile teens in Mercy. Both were so into the argument that they eventually got ousted from the soda shoppe-- the waitress was so eager to hush them up that she let them leave with their glasses in hand. Walter bickered with Max all the way back across to the sheriff’s office, where he paused as she took a step up to the porch. His competitive smile faded, and Max wondered what he’d thought of that made it disappear.

She stopped where she stood and took a sip of her blessedly cold cream soda. Afterwards, she asked, “What’s up?”

Walter shrugged. “Just… that alien doctor. I don’t like him here. The Gunslinger gives me the willies.”

Max rolled her eyes, mistaking his talk of the ‘alien doctor’ for her Doctor. “Don’t worry about the Doctor, he’s just an idiot with a chin the size of Texas. He’ll deal with the Gunslinger.”

“No, the real one,” Walter protested. He seemed to shift uncomfortably for a moment, then asked, “Can we talk about this somewhere else?”

Before Max could answer, the wailing of a siren blasted across the plains. Max’s head snapped up, identifying the noise as coming from about a mile into the desert. She wondered if the Gunslinger had grown tired of waiting.

Walter swallowed hard. “What in the hell is that?”

“Sounds like someone did something they weren’t supposed to,” Max muttered distractedly. She was debating the risk versus reward of taking off, flying out to see the source of the sound. She absently sat down the cream soda on the porch rail and walked back out into the center of the square, trying to see out into the desert, but a mountain rose up between her and the source.

“It’s coming from everywhere at once,” Walter marveled, mixed awe and nervousness in his voice. 

“No, it’s coming from there,” Max said. She pointed off over the crest of the mountain. “It’s just echoing around the valley. There’s just one source.”

The sound suddenly ceased, leaving only the eerie silence and emptiness of the town square. Max put her jacket on and turned on her heel, heading back towards the sheriff’s office, Walter following.

“What are you doing?” He shouted after her.

Max ran up the steps to the office. She didn’t answer Walter, just opened the screen door and barged in--

The Doctor and Rory were gone. Left were Amy and a guy with a gun, and Max barely had enough time to register that he was now pointing the gun at her before he fired. Adrenaline flooded her synapses. The crack of the gun firing ripped through the air. Max jerked away as fast as she could, but she still yelped as pain exploded through her left arm. The gunshot rang in her ears, stunning her momentarily, just long enough for the door to slam shut in front of her.

Walter grabbed her and guided her, as fast as he could, away from the door to the sheriff’s office. Still stunned, Max winced as she cradled her left arm and ran alongside him. She wasn’t sure where they were going, but she knew she needed to treat her arm, and fast. Blood seeped out between her fingers as she held her arm to her chest.

_ Amy.  _ She was still trapped in there with the gun guy–

“Wait, no, she’s still–“ Max protested, but Walter pulled her into a neighboring building, muttering something about the guy who shot her. She was too stunned to protest until he sat her down in a barbershop chair and Max felt the confused gazes on her. A bleeding, strange girl in a men’s barbershop. Of course she garnered attention.

“Jacket off,” Walter commanded.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Max snapped. She then realized that she would, in fact, need to take her jacket off if she were to treat her wound, whether or not she’d been told to. Reluctantly, she did so, grimacing as she pulled her sleeve off her arm. There was a tear in the leather of the jacket now, one Max promised herself she’d mourn later. Her wings were uncomfortably wedged into the chair behind her, and she shifted enough to let them breathe. 

Once her arm was exposed, Walter swore under his breath, along with the other patrons of the barber shop. Max, however, let out a sigh of relief. While the wound appeared nasty, it had barely stained the sleeve of her shirt, and the bullet had only grazed her arm. She was, however, bleeding profusely enough to turn Walter as pale as a sheet. 

“We need a doctor,” he said plainly, as Max ripped off a strip of the barber’s cape to create a tourniquet. She wasn’t entirely sure that she needed one, but she’d seen it in the movies. She got stuck trying to tie it off with one hand, though. 

She looked up, out the window, saw a flash of brown tweed and Mr. Peanut legs disappearing back into the sheriff’s office. The Doctor was back.

The barber, who had another truly fantastic mustache, shook his head helplessly, probably still stunned by the bleeding girl wearing pants. “We ain’t got a doctor anymore.”

“You don’t, but I do,” Max said, giving up on the tourniquet thing and using the cloth to apply pressure to her arm. She winced, but didn’t let up. “Walter, we gotta go back to the sheriff’s office and get the Doctor.”

“The doctor?” Walter repeated, slightly stunned. “But he--”

She gritted her teeth. “He’s an idiot, but I trust him. He knows how to fix this. Fix me. He’s had to do it a hell of a lot.”

Walter’s gaze darted around the shop. “But you--”

“Walter! Now!” She shouted, impatient from the pain. 

He took the hint and offered a hesitant arm to Max, who pulled herself to her feet with his help. With his arm under her good one and around her back, he helped her back to the office. Her soda glass had fallen to the porch and shattered in the ruckus, sending saccharine liquid spilling into the sand. Ants were already gathering for the feast.

Up the first step, the second.

“You sure you wanna go back in there?” Walter asked.

Max laughed breathlessly. “Nope.”

The two of them pushed through the swinging doors together. Their entrance startled everyone in the room, who seemed to be in the midst of an intense discussion. Max hadn’t gotten a good enough look inside to see anyone but Amy and a shadow of the guy with the gun before-- to be fair, she was a bit focused on the gun. Now, the whole crew was back; the Doctor, Amy, Rory, and Isaac.

All of their gazes gravitated to Max’s bleeding arm, to which she simply explained, “I got in trouble.”

While Amy and the Doctor stood stunned for a moment, Rory immediately came to her, sitting her in one of the two chairs across from Isaac’s desk. “What happened?” He asked in his Calm Nurse voice.

Max shook her head. Rory, kneeling, began to dress her wound. She focused on Amy, mostly to distract herself. “Ask Amy. I was just coming in here to talk to the Doctor about the sirens and someone had pulled a gun on her--”

She trailed off, watching over Rory’s shoulder as the Doctor’s expression fell. She’d rarely seen the look on him, and, if she was being totally honest, it was worse than his rage. It was only in moments like this when the playful facade had fallen and the inexplicably human hunger for vengeance hadn’t yet overwhelmed him when she was reminded just how old and how alien her friend really was.

“It was you at the door,” Amy said in shock. Her eyes darted to Max’s blood, now staining Rory’s hands. “You were supposed to be out exploring.”

“She was,” Walter interjected. “She heard the sirens and came back to talk to you.”

Max’s gaze remained locked on the Doctor, whose expression was now hardening into anger. She wasn’t sure what she’d walked into, or who he was about to destroy. “Hey, Doctor, I’m okay--”

“I know, Max, you’re always okay,” he muttered, finally meeting her eyes. “You’re okay when you’re kidnapped, you’re okay when you’re terrified, you’re okay when you’re bleeding.”

She blinked in confusion. “So…? Isn’t that good? What’s the problem with being okay?”

“The problem is you shouldn’t have to be,” he snapped. “The problem is your wings, Max. The problem is the people that hurt you continue to walk the earth like their histories are behind them when you never get to run from yours.” He wasn’t looking at her anymore, instead turning away to face a seventh person in the room Max hadn’t noticed. 

There was a stout, spectacled man in the corner, in the shadows beneath a high window. He was staring at Max, his face mostly obscured behind his hand. Her heart thudded a bit in half-recognition-- but where had she seen him before?

“Do you remember all your  _ patients _ ?” The Doctor hissed. “Those that remain are either trying to kill you or buried your memory deep enough that they don’t remember. But you… you kept a very good log.”

The stranger stared at the wall. “I remember everything I did. Some faces, some names… but every revelation.”

“What do you mean, the problem is her wings?” Walter asked nervously, his eyes darting between the Doctor and Max.

There was a long, heavy moment of silence. “Take off your TARDIS key, Max,” the Doctor whispered ominously.

She, Rory, and Amy all shared a look of confusion. Max began to ask, “Won’t that mean…?”

“Yes,” he answered already. “He remembers all his best discoveries. Even if they don’t remember him.”

Max remembered what she’d said to Walter about trusting him, then took a deep breath and pulled her TARDIS key over her head. There was a shift in the room as Isaac, Walter, and the stranger reacted to Max’s newly materialized wings. Without the perception filter, they were plain to see.

“You’re an angel,” Walter murmured.

Before Max could answer, the stranger stood and stepped out of the shadows. “She’s Archangel.” His small eyes were alight with joy. “I thought surely you had been destroyed in the Battle of the Seven Keffernies.”

Max’s dark eyes bored holes through the man who’d emerged. He was dressed in period-appropriate waistcoat and slacks, looking almost perfectly Western save for the telltale black markings down the side of his face. Her hands gripped the arms of the chair so tightly that Rory feared they’d splinter in her superhuman hold. She didn’t speak a word, her mind so flooded with memories she’d long suppressed.

A surgical table. Her own voice, screaming until she couldn’t anymore. The astounded voices of scientists as she, somehow, survived every test her predecessors failed. It was her childhood, repackaged and flung into space. The same killing curiosity. The same testing, the same surgeries, the same screaming, screaming, screaming…

“She’s Maximum Ride, thanks. Now, what in the hell’s Archangel?” Amy asked, more than a touch of maternal instinct in her tone. She mimicked Max’s unyielding stare.

No one could see the Doctor’s face but the not-so-stranger. “Archangel,” he said, disgust evident in his voice. “She was the revelation that made the…  _ successful _ cyborgs possible. They cut her open and copied her body’s survival mechanisms, used her as a template for the perfect soldier.” He took a step towards the small man. “They didn’t learn her name or care to know it. They gave her one that suited her purpose for them. Archangel. Savior of all the experiments who would’ve died screaming after her.”

The room was silent. Max knew without looking that Rory was giving her those pitying blue eyes again, like she didn’t deserve all this hurt she kept enduring. At this point, she knew she had to. It wouldn’t keep happening to her if she didn’t bring it on herself somehow. 

The quiet broke when Amy dared ask with a trembling voice, “When… when did all that happen?” 

“While I was looking for Melody,” the Doctor said, voice eerily still, like a sky about to erupt in a cyclone. “Max was her protector. Somehow, they must have ended up in the crossfire of the Eighth Great Kahler War.”

“Jex caught her?” Rory asked him, then thought better of it, turning his attention back to Max. “He caught you?”

She absently appreciated being spoken to instead of about, but shook her head. “They caught Melody.”

Amy and Rory’s eyes widened in horror, and Max forced her words to go on. “But I didn’t let them hurt her. I convinced them she was just a weak human child, another death on their operating table. And I said if they let her go, they could have me instead.” She fluttered her wings slightly. “A tougher kill.”

The Ponds fell silent. Max didn’t dare look at them, instead focusing her attention on Isaac’s great mustache.

“And she was like a miracle,” Jex said. “She saved countless lives by volunteering herself. Just like in your old Earth myths, a winged savior, come to fight the good fight.”

“I don’t care about your stupid fight,” Max spat. “I didn’t even know what planet I was on, let alone care about who was fighting who!”

“You volunteered,” Jex dismissed her.

Max seethed. “I stepped in to save the life of an innocent child. That is not consent.”

“It was worth it, though, wasn’t it?” He countered. “You suffered, and you bled, but in the end, you did a good thing. That’s war. That’s life. On Kahler, we sang songs of the blessed Archangel who gave us the secrets of survival. You screamed, but your pain was worthwhile.”

“No.” The Doctor stepped between Max and Jex. 

Max couldn’t help but be a bit miffed at the feeling of being shielded, but she was still being tended to by Rory and couldn’t exactly change her position.

“Her pain was wrong, and cruel, and obscene. No one’s war is worth her life!” The Doctor thundered, but Jex didn’t cower.

Instead, he pulled himself up higher. “Looking at you, Doctor, is like looking in a mirror, almost. There’s rage there, like me. Guilt, like me. Solitude. Everything but the nerve to do what needs to be done. Thank the gods my people weren’t relying on you to save them.”

“No,” the Doctor muttered to himself, turning away momentarily. He met the eyes of the others-- Isaac, Amy, Rory, Max, even Walter-- and seemed to make up his mind. “No.” He turned on his heel rapidly, back to Jex. “But these people are.”

Max heard the way his voice growled and looked to Walter, mouthing,  _ get out! _

“Out,” the Doctor hissed at Jex. When he didn’t move fast enough, his volume quadrupled. “Out, out, out!” He bellowed, pulling him by his vest. He practically dragged him to the swinging doors, past Walter on the porch, Isaac hot on his tail.

Amy went to follow, but Rory caught her wrist. 

She scoffed. “You’re really letting him do this?”

“Save us all?” Rory asked incredulously. “Yeah, I really am.”

Amy, in a huff, pulled away from him and walked into the sun with purpose in her step.

Rory sighed. “She’s gonna get herself killed one day,” he muttered anxiously, looking to Max for her agreement. 

She simply nodded, lips pressed into a line. “Good thing you’ve got me to stop that day from coming.” Her pursed lips grew into a smirk, and Rory, endeared, smiled. 

Max attempted to stand, her head going a bit light from blood loss. That was an unfortunate side effect of her accelerated pulse. She leaned on Rory to stay on her feet, and together, they headed towards the doors.

Outside, a crowd was gathering at the town line. Rory’s arm around her waist became less necessary as she got used to walking, although her arm still throbbed intermittently. 

And then a shot went off.

Max’s heart leapt into her throat as she broke free of Rory. The masses of people parted around her, gaping at her wings, as she hurried forward on her own. Once she reached the front of the crowd, she spied Amy, pineapple-print sundress fluttering in the desert wind, pointing a gun at the Doctor.

“You won’t shoot me, Amy!” He protested, and Max saw a gun in his hand, too, pointed in Jex’s face. Her stomach turned uncomfortably at the sight. Neither of them had ever held guns like that before, like they were ready to do something with them. Although Mercy was nowhere near the strangest place Max had traveled, this was the first time she ever felt her world turn entirely upside down.

Amy cocked the gun clumsily. “How do  _ you _ know?!” She demanded, her voice thick with anger. “Maybe I’ve changed!” She brandished the gun carelessly as she talked with her hands. The crowd flinched preemptively. Amy was in a tizzy. “I mean, you’ve clearly been taking stupid lessons since I saw you last--”

The gun went off, clearly unintentionally, and Max jerked away. Luckily, Amy’s only victim was the dusty ground. 

“I didn’t mean to do that,” she protested, shrugging her shoulders.

The next shot that went off wasn’t from Amy’s gun, but Isaac’s, who Max trusted incrementally more with the weapon. Still, she approached Amy from behind, trying to stay out of the line of fire as well as defending her friend.

“Everyone who isn’t an American,” Isaac shouted over the noise, then pointed at Amy and the Doctor in turn, “drop your gun.”

There was a moment of hesitation, then the Doctor turned back towards the crowd, gun lowered. Max studied how it looked so easily nestled in his hand, like he was no stranger to using one. She’d never really considered that he denounced them out of experience rather than a general distaste for them, but the way he held that gun told her she’d assumed too quickly what the Doctor’s motives were.

He marched up to Amy, all red face and rage. “We could end this right now,” he said. “We could save everyone right now.”

Max hardly recognized the snarling expression, the wolflike curl of his lip. 

Amy, recognizing Max’s presence, looked between her and the Time Lord. “This is not how we roll, and you know it. What happened to you, Doctor? When did killing someone become an option?”

Gaze lingering on Max for a moment, Max watched a shadow of something dark cross his expression again. She realized after he had looked away that his eyes had caught on her wings. “Jex has to answer for his crimes!” He insisted in a desperate whisper, with a fury that didn’t match his usual demeanor. “Amy, he tried to take your daughter. He tortured Max.”

“So what?” Max chimed in, stepping forward. “So you kill him, and who’s next? You’ll go hunt down everyone else who’s ever turned people into weapons out of terror? You’re not an avenging angel.”

“And you’re not an archangel, but he tried his best to turn you into one, didn’t he?” The Doctor hissed, speaking with renewed bloodthirstiness. “When you first came with me, Max, you wanted revenge on your creators. I told you to be kind, be brave, but never cruel or violent, and yet I don’t save everyone. I fail, over and over, I even failed to save you.” His voice caught in his throat for a moment, and Max’s brows drew together in concern. Before she could protest, he continued. “People keep dying because of my mercy! And what if you were right, and revenge is justice after all? What makes him so different from the men who made you?”

“Nothing,” she said, and afterwards, she realized the truth of it. Jex truly was nothing but another scientist trying to save the world and destroying lives in the process. He had hurt her, attempted to hurt others, and he’d likely do it again. 

And yet, she felt the beginning of a smile play at the corner of her mouth. Because, Max realized, she didn’t want Jex to be executed. She didn’t want death answering for death-- not anymore. Her whole life had been ruled like that, and it got her nowhere.

“Nothing makes him different, Doctor,” Max said evenly, the crowd suddenly hushed. Even Amy had fallen quiet beside her. She lifted her chin decisively and said, “What’s different is me. I’m not the same person I was when I first came with you. And I don’t want revenge anymore.” Her hand lifted, palm up, silently asking for him to give her the gun. Somehow, everyone knew she didn’t plan on using it.

She watched his expression, trying to see if she’d convinced him yet. “I want things to get better. And we don’t do that by killing all the bad guys. Words win wars, right?”

There was a long moment of quiet, interrupted only by the whistling of the wind over the rooftops and the hushing of sand against wooden walls. The winged, bleeding girl stood, half-smiling, before the centuries-old alien; in her eyes, in spite of everything, he saw hope. 

He changed his mind.

With a sigh, the Doctor looked down at the gun in his hand. It was a dark and ugly thing, heavy with deadly potential. It wasn’t the sort of thing a doctor wielded.

He placed the gun in Max’s hand, trapping the weapon between their palms for a long moment. Max’s heart filled with pride-- and she nodded once at him, silently bidding him to do what he knew was right.

He released her hand, leaving the gun with her. The Doctor walked back to the boundary line as Max returned the gun to its rightful owner. “Jex,” he said apprehensively, extending an empty hand to him. “Move over the line. Now.”

Max’s brief moment of happiness at the more familiar scene-- her friend inviting someone back to the side of light-- was suddenly ended when the Gunslinger materialized mere inches behind Jex.

This time, he was close enough, well-lit by the brilliant sunlight and the sand. Max recognized him. Even underneath the twisted metal and cyborg parts, she knew his name. “Kahler Tek,” she murmured, and at once had an answer for why his form had struck such dread in her heart. 

_ “Prepare the next subject,” a cold voice commanded, just as Max crested the top of a wave of sedative. Her head was fuzzy, but luckily turned enough to the side that she saw the soldier on the operating table beside her. _

_ She didn’t know his name-- by that time, she hardly knew her own. But he was gritting his teeth, probably in an effort to stay composed in the face of such horrors.  _

_ With a leaden tongue, Max managed to whisper, “Hi.” _

_ He jerked his head sideways, and his gaze roamed over her bleeding, restrained body. His eyes, like most eyes, lingered on her wings. After a silence, during which they both listened for any approaching surgeons, he replied. “Hello. I thought you were dead.” _

_ “Me too,” she replied, purposely keeping her eyes away from her bloodied hospital gown. Her head pounded, her eyelids heavy with the weight of the anesthetic beginning to fill her bloodstream. It wasn’t quite as effective as she’d hoped, since she’d woken up three times already when she wasn’t supposed to. Max guessed the alien surgeons were underestimating her metabolism.  _

_ “Are you an angel?” The soldier asked. “I think we could all use an angel right about now.” _

_ Max, head full of concrete, struggled to answer-- “I think I’m the closest you’ll get.” _

The Gunslinger had once been the hopeful soldier, the one who believed in angels. Max felt a wave of shame knowing that he may have preferred death to his new existence of semi-life. She’d faced the choice herself a handful of times.

From her place, half-obscured by the crowd now that she’d returned the gun, he couldn’t see her. She wondered if maybe that was a good thing.

But he wasn’t lowering his gun, and Jex wasn’t stepping over the line. In fact, he was turning to face Kahler Tek. 

Max heard Kahler Tek say, in a voice that was half-mangled by machinery, “Make peace with your gods.”

“Kahler-Tek, isn’t it?” Jex asked. “I remember all your names, even now. I’ll never hurt anyone again,” he promised.

Max felt tensions rise, and her wings unconsciously stretched themselves in preparation for flight. The people near her moved to allow her room.

“I’m even helping people here,” Jex beseeched Kahler Tek.

Kahler Tek didn’t seem at all persuaded. Clearly, he hadn’t yet reached Max’s level of separation where his hunger was no longer for revenge. Where she ached for a better world, a world where there was no need for evil scientists or dying children, Tek still longed to kill those who’d ruined him. Max, however mature she was trying to be, understood completely.

If she was being completely honest, she wasn’t sure she’d protest if Tek were to execute Jex. The Doctor was one thing-- Kahler Tek was another.

“Last chance,” he said, gun making a high-pitched keening noise as it prepared to fire. “Make peace with your gods.”

Max saw the motion before anyone else, and she launched herself forward with matching steps as Isaac burst into a run. 

“No!” He shouted, pushing Jex out of the way, and Max was too far behind to protect him when the inevitable shot fired. Isaac screamed instead of Jex, and his body fell to the sand.

Max dropped to her knees beside him, jostling her aching arm. She didn’t know how, exactly, Kahler guns worked, but she knew that they’d kill at such close range. Isaac, much to her dismay, was dying.

The Doctor seemed to know what she was thinking, exchanging a mournful glance with her over his body. “Isaac,” he said desperately, grabbing the marshal’s hand. He began pleading with him, trying to help him stay conscious, as Max stood again.

She turned, making a semicircle in the sand with her heel, to face Jex, who lay in shock on the ground behind her. Her shadow fell over him, wings and all, the sun beating down on her feathers and shining off the golden tones in her braid.

“Archangel,” Kahler Tek said in awe. “I thought you died at the--”

“Battle of the Seven Kerwhatsits? Yeah. So did Doc McStuffins over here. But you thought wrong.” She took a step forward, and now it was her turn to face down the Gunslinger at the boundary. “I remember you, too, Kahler Tek. You had hope.”

“Before they turned me into a monster,” he hissed.

“Yeah, and they deserve to rot in hell for that one. Trust me, I get it. I’m with you.” Max swallowed hard, glancing back towards Isaac, whose hand the Doctor still held, even now that he’d gone still. She met Kahler Tek’s eyes again. “But these people aren’t like us. They’re just trying to live their lives the best they can. To them, he’s a savior. To us, he’s a monster. And… in a way, we’re both right. That’s the hard part.”

Tek seemed to be listening to her until she called Jex a savior. He snarled at the very mention. “How can you say that? He tore you apart!”

“He wasn’t the first,” Max said fiercely, then forced her voice to even out. “Tek, you’re older than I am, and we’ve seen a lot of the same things. Stuff that would give regular people nightmares. But if there’s one thing I can tell you, it’s that all that pain doesn’t make you a monster. What makes somebody a monster is doing evil things, and that’s not you.”

The desert was quiet as death. Kahler Tek studied Max with an asymmetrical pair of eyes. She stared him down with equal intensity, the same eyes she used on her Flock back home when the boys started picking fights with each other. 

“Take Jex to his cell,” Max heard the Doctor saying behind her. “If anything happens to him, you’ll have me to answer to.”

Max heard scuffling in the sand as the townspeople moved Jex back to the marshal’s office. Tek didn’t bother watching him go.

“End it with us,” Max whispered. “We can finish this today. Right now.”

“You’re right,” Tek grumbled. He extended his natural hand to her. “But there are things you must know.”

Max swallowed hard, knowing full well that the Doctor, Amy, and Rory were behind her, hoping against hope she’d do the rational thing and walk away. But the Silence had stolen so much of her memory, and the idea that answers may lie with Kahler Tek tickled her curiosity. 

She took his hand.

“Max, don’t,” Amy warned her.

Max stepped over the boundary.

Kahler Tek raised his voice, addressing the masses, “You have until noon tomorrow. Give him to me or I’ll kill you all.”

She didn’t have time to protest before the world blinked away.

When Max got her bearings again, she was wobbly-kneed at the edge of a cliff overlooking Mercy. Zooming in, she saw the tiny figures of the town looking stunned. Some of them appeared to be crying-- they’d just watched the murder of their beloved marshal, after all. Max skimmed the group, finding the Doctor, flanked by Amy and Rory, on the outskirts, just turning to go back to the marshal’s office. There was a glint on the Doctor’s lapel, and Max realized with a small swell of sentimentality that it was Isaac’s badge.

“How can you forgive him?” Tek asked gruffly. 

If Max tried to remember, she still detected shadows of what his voice used to sound like. “I don’t,” she admitted, turning around to face him. As her eyes readjusted to closer distance, Tek’s form wobbled out of focus. He almost looked like his old self.

And then her eyes clicked into clarity, and he was a monster again.

“Your friends. They want the innocents to survive, but they won’t hand Jex over to me.” he leveled Max with his gaze.

Her stomach twisted as, at this proximity, she saw where some of Tek’s flesh was puckering around the metal of his cyborg eye. She had to make an effort not to grimace. “I know. They’re used to getting what they want,” she said, a sardonic smirk pulling at her lips. She didn’t remember the last time the Doctor hadn’t gotten his way, but she was sure it wasn’t pretty. 

“He wants me to forgive Jex,” Tek grumbled. “He’s an idiot if he thinks I’m so easily dissuaded.” 

Max didn’t really know what  _ dissuaded _ meant, but Amy had taught her root words a while ago. If  _ persuaded  _ meant to change somebody’s mind, then dissuaded must just mean being stubborn. Max, of course, could never relate.

“He’s an idiot anyway,” she said at last.

Tek turned away from her, tromping gracelessly up the sandy hill. His cyber-limbs gave creaks of protest, and Max thought maybe Tek could do with a tune-up. She followed him, purposely slowing her steps to stay behind.

He led her to a relatively concave expanse of hill, shielded from the whistling wind and flying dust. Hastily buried in the sand, she spied more straps of ammunition.

“Are those for your arm gun?” Max asked without shame. 

Tek turned to her, studying her expression. She didn’t flinch, brown eyes clear and honest, and he realized she was simply curious. “How old are you, Archangel?”

She rolled her eyes at the name. “I asked a question first.”

Tek relented. “No. Those are for the blaster.”

“What blaster?” She inquired without hesitation.

“Your turn,” Tek reminded her. Unlike Max, his voice didn’t sparkle with the humor of taking turns answering questions. He simply saw the conversation as an even exchange. “How many revolutions have you seen?”

“Revolutions, like--”

“Earth-years,” Tek clarified.

“Oh.” Max was secretly glad he’d bothered to clear the air, because no matter how many times the Doctor explained it, she couldn’t remember the difference between a rotation and a revolution of a planet. It sounded like a brain teaser every time he tried to enlighten her. “I-- well, I’m not totally sure. Best guess is… eighteen?” 

“Eighteen Terran revolutions is a little over six Kahler triads,” Tek said, which meant jack squat to Max. He elaborated, well aware that she had no recollection of her time on Kahler. “You’re the same age my sister was.”

She didn’t say a word. It didn’t sound like the kind of thing he wanted a reply to, anyway.

Tek looked to the half-buried rounds of ammunition in the sand. “The blaster is a manual tool. It’s got higher firepower and radius. One shot could set three of those buildings ablaze,” Tek said, and Max realized he was answering her question from earlier. She walked across and knelt by them, gingerly pulling the double sashes from the dust. “Fully loaded, I could take out the whole town. Because the blaster is manual, I’d take myself with it. That’s how it will end. For me, Jex, and everyone in that town.”

“You can’t,” Max protested, studying the cool rods of metal in a row. They looked like big, sharp bullets. She suspected they contained some kind of volatile explosive, something that would mean Tek would die in the blaze with no time to escape. “There’s children there. There’s families--  _ my _ family.”

“I’ve done worse,” Tek growled. “You were trapped in that laboratory. You didn’t see what the armies did, thanks to you.”

“No,” Max said, standing. “I didn’t. But you can show me.”

Tek was silent. His expression twitched, as if he had changed his mind.

“What?” She asked anxiously.

Tek wouldn’t meet her eyes, but began to walk, leaving Max on the hill. The blaster shots weighed heavy in her hand. “We have the walk to Jex’s ship for you to change your mind. If I arrive alone, I’ll assume you came to your senses.”

He didn’t look back.

It was night when the Doctor heard light footsteps up the front porch of the marshal’s office. He watched Amy straighten her back, pausing in her dealing of cards.

The doors swung open, and in came Max.

“I’m fine,” she said as soon as she was inside, but that didn’t stop the fussing.

“Don’t you ever do that again,” Amy said, dropping her deck of cards.

Rory stood from his chair and approached her hesitantly, studying her for injuries.

The Doctor simply watched her, trying to work out what the Gunslinger had shown her. If it was what he suspected, she wouldn’t be too happy with him. 

In fact, he wouldn’t put it past her to ask to go home for good.

“I’m okay,” Max said again, then smirked. “I may have just saved our lives.”

“Did you change his mind?” Rory asked excitedly.

Her face fell. “Uh, no. But I did do this.”

She lifted the TARDIS key, which she’d apparently put back on, from around her neck. As the perception filter faded, two sashes of blaster ammunition became visible, looped over her shoulders.

“Those are Kahler blaster shells,” Jex cried in surprise.

Max visibly jerked away from his voice. She hadn’t noticed him, lingering in the corner of his cell like a creep. She stepped away, backing towards the Ponds. Her gaze burned through Jex like she really was an archangel. “This is your fault. People have died. Because. Of.  _ You _ .”

Jex wasn’t nearly rattled enough by that to satisfy her. He simply shook his head as if he were disappointed in her. “You don’t understand. I only did what I had to do.”

“You didn’t have to run away from the consequences,” she countered. Her voice was strangely raw, as if she’d recently been crying.

The Doctor’s heart sank.

Amy tugged at Max’s wrist, concern etched onto her expression. 

Max turned back to them. “He was gonna use these to take us all out at once tomorrow. I used the TARDIS key to steal them without him noticing.”

Rory opened his arms slightly, a silent offer of a victory hug, but Max flattened her lips into a line and hesitated. He changed his offer-- lifted a hand to high five. That, she could handle, and she clapped her hand against his as the door swung open again.

It was the preacher, looking classically Western in all black, all the way up to his cowboy hat. “Marshal,” he nodded at the Doctor. “Ma’ams,” to Max and Amy. And, lastly, an offhanded, “Fella,” for Rory, who shrugged as if to say ‘same old, same old’. 

“You need to come outside,” the preacher said to the Doctor. 

He sat up, brushing his thoughts of Max and her discovery to the side. “Why? What’s wrong?” He asked nervously.

“Just come outside,” the preacher repeated, in the same manner as a teacher encouraging a student to join the class.

Max wasn’t anxious until the preacher’s eyes caught on the gun belt hanging from the coat hooks. He looked to the Doctor, gesturing to the belt. “And you should put that on.”

He exited, leaving them in silence.

“Amy, Rory, watch Jex. Max, with me,” the Doctor said instinctively, going for the belt.

Max stepped towards him. “You’re not--”

“Max, please,” he said, almost sounding disappointed. He looked over his shoulder, winking good-naturedly, as he haphazardly put the belt on. “Have a little faith.”

She should’ve smiled, but she didn’t.

Outside, the townsfolk had gathered. While it was past most of the childrens’ bedtimes, they, too, seemed to be in attendance, half-hidden behind their mothers. Max spied Sadie, the barmaid, and a few men from the barber shop. A group of young men stood front and center, and she saw guns strapped to their hips.

No wonder the preacher had warned the Doctor to put one on.

“What’s going on?” The Doctor asked, Max following two steps behind him.

Walter emerged as the voice of the masses, his gaze catching on Max. He looked towards the preacher. “She really need to be here?” He asked, almost like he was nervous about Max watching.

“Yeah, she does,” Max piped up, more than a trace of annoyance in her voice.

Walter swallowed hard, shifting his gaze to the Doctor. “ _ He _ in there?” Walter asked, jutting his chin towards the cell. No one needed to clarify who they were referring to.

He took the Doctor’s silence as confirmation. “Leave the keys and take Max for a walk,” he said, moving his hands as if to placate him. “By the time you get back, this’ll all be done.”

“I promised Isaac I’d protect him,” the Doctor said. He didn’t move an inch.

Max’s gaze flickered between him and Walter. She didn’t like his stance, like prey about to make a break for it. She’d stood like that before, right before making a fight-or-flight decision.

“Protecting him got Isaac dead!” Walter pointed out, genuine hurt in his voice. Max wondered if it was Isaac who taught him how to shoot, since he didn’t seem to have a family in the crowd. “Tomorrow, it’ll get us all dead.” His voice was tight, anxious. This was a boy pushed to his limits on fear, going stir-crazy.

“Last I checked, you thought Isaac was right to fight,” Max said, addressing the whole town. “What happened to all that, huh? It died with him?”

“We lost,” Walter protested. “We gotta admit it, give that Gunslinger what it wants.”

“What it wants is to kill our friend!” Sadie interrupted, voice full of fire. Max felt herself smile a little.

“We don’t got any ill feelings towards the Doc,” Walter continued, louder, speaking over the whispers of the crowd. Max watched people start to think. If she knew anything, it was that thinking was just a fancy way of changing your mind. 

She hoped, for all their sakes, their minds would change.

“We just thinkin’ ‘bout our families,” Walter said. This time, Max could’ve sworn he looked at her on purpose. She almost laughed.

“Hand him over and we all safe again,” Walter finished.

The Doctor was quiet for a moment, hardly fazed. “You know I can’t do that.”

Walter sighed, setting his jaw. “Then we got us a problem.”

He brushed his coat back, revealing the gun belt Max had already spied him wearing. She instinctively moved closer to the Doctor, ready to flatten them both if Walter dared fire that thing. Although she’d already been shot at once today, she’d risk it again.

“Please don’t do this,” the Doctor said in that annoying, condescending tone he took on when placating people. It always backfired for Max.

It looked like it was having the same effect on Walter. “Why, you reckon you’re quicker than me?” He demanded, fingers dancing in the air over his gun.

“Oh, certainly not,” the Doctor scoffed. “But this? Lynch mobs? A town turning against itself? This is everything Isaac didn’t want!” He was addressing the whole group now, and some of them seemed to agree. The mothers with their children began to back away. The older men, who likely knew Isaac well, stared at the dust.

Walter, however, took the Doctor’s change of focus and whipped out his gun. 

Max took the final step forward, now shoulder-to-shoulder with the Doctor. He nudged her with his elbow, trying to get her to step back. This wasn’t why he’d brought her outside with him-- but she wasn’t sure why else he would have.

“Max, walk away,” Walter hissed.

“I don’t do ‘walk away’,” she quipped roughly. “But I can totally handle ‘raise hell’ if that’s more appealing to you.”

“I don’t wanna hurt you,” Walter said, shifting foot to foot.

She shook her head. “You don’t wanna hurt  _ anyone _ . You’re just scared.”

“How old are you?” The Doctor interrupted.

Walter was eager to change the subject. “Nearly nineteen,” he responded unevenly.

“Eighteen, then,” the Doctor corrected. He took a step forward in the dirt. “Too young to have fought in the war. So I’m guessing you’ve never shot anyone before, have you?”

“First time for everything,” Walter shrugged, but Max saw in his eyes that he was hesitant. Anybody would be. She’d been through worse hell than that boy could even imagine, and she still didn’t like guns.

The Doctor took another step. “But that’s how this all started. Jex turned a scared boy who’d never fought before into a weapon. That same story’s about to make you a killer, too.” 

Walter glanced down at his hands, his gun, still pointed at the Doctor’s chest.

“Don’t you see? Violence doesn’t end violence, it extends it.”

Max, personally, thought that was a big generalization, but she let it slide since there was still a chance the Doctor would get shot. 

“I don’t think you want to do this,” the Doctor said. “I don’t think you want to become that man.”

Walter’s gun hand trembled a little. “There’s kids here!” He protested, his voice shaky.

“I know,” the Doctor nodded, “who I can save. If you’ll let me.”

Walter looked up at Max, and now he directed a question her way. “He really worth the risk?” He asked, referring to Jex.

Max watched the Doctor’s shoulders tense up. She wondered what he thought she’d say. The old Max would’ve gone in and thrown Jex to the townspeople herself. The new Max… well, that was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it?

“I don’t know,” she admitted, looking down, absently drawing a semicircle in the dust with her boot. She seemed entirely too at ease for someone whose friend was about to be shot. When she looked up, she let her walls fall just a little as she looked at Walter and his old-photograph face.  _ Is he worth the risk? _ “I don’t know,” Max repeated, then nodded once. “But you are.”

After a breath of silence, Walter lowered his gun. The crowd began to disperse. 

As Walter retreated, the Doctor turned and walked past Max on his way up the porch steps. “Frightened people,” he muttered. “Give me a Dalek, any day.”

Max followed him back inside the marshal’s office, where he unstrapped the gun belt and laid it on the desk. Amy and Rory had departed, likely to the inn next door. Max took up residence by the window, watching the remaining townspeople disperse. The undertaker had entered the marshal’s office sometime during the hustle and bustle.

“Fresh coffee, marshal,” he said, handing a mug of the stuff to the Doctor, who Max knew wouldn’t drink it. 

Max smiled to herself, still looking out the window. With any luck, he’d let her have the coffee when he was done pretending to have adult taste buds.

“For what it’s worth,” the undertaker whispered, “I know you’re gonna save us. Isaac made you marshal for a reason, and if you’re good enough for him, you’re good enough for me. Reckon you should know that.”

“Thank you,” the Doctor said, voice genuine.

Max’s heart was briefly warmed, but then she looked back to the Doctor and saw the undertaker taking his measurements.  _ Again _ . 

“Um,” she said, tilting her head at the undertaker.

The Doctor looked over his shoulder and straightened. “Oi! Get out of here!” He said, in his usual twelve-year-old boy voice. 

There was a moment of quiet, during which Max and the Doctor exchanged a bit of laughter, then she resumed watching the town square.

“You should sleep,” he advised her, voice low enough that Jex wouldn’t be part of the conversation from his cell.

Max shook her head. “Don’t know if I can sleep. Saw some freaky stuff today.”

She didn’t need to look at the Doctor for him to know she was referring to what Tek had shown her in the desert. He sighed, not saying a word. She would talk only if she was ready to.

When she spoke, her voice was soft, vulnerable. “When were you going to tell me…” she began, then hesitated. Her expression was unreadable.

He didn’t know what she’d found out, and that scared him. There was plenty he hadn’t told her, plenty of secrets he’d gladly take to his grave. 

She took a breath and tried again. “When were you gonna tell me you found me on Kahler?”

Although he hated the answer, it wasn’t the question he feared she’d ask. He rubbed his face, ashamed. “Max, I’m sorry. I’ll tell you now if you want, but…”

He trailed off, and Max’s eyes darted to Jex, pretending not to be listening. He had a point; she didn’t particularly want to have a heart-to-heart with the Doctor if their audience was a maniacal alien whitecoat. 

She knew that, and yet, she still longed for answers. The alternative, after all, was doing this in front of the Ponds. 

“Yeah, I know,” she nodded. “I just-- I have to know. What I saw, it didn’t make sense.”

“It wouldn’t,” he agreed. His face was tight with concern. “But what was it that you saw?”

Max closed her eyes.

Images of her-- every inch, every facet, every strength, every weakness. Videos of her blood, siphoned from her unconscious heart into the body of a Kahler soldier. They screamed as their biology adapted to hers, their mutative DNA coupling with her superior biology to make them more durable. She rarely woke.

Her voice, screaming.

Out of place, images of her before the operations. The Kahler scientists’ surveillance of her, hand in hand with a little girl. The child couldn’t have been more than six. 

Melody.

They’d wanted Melody for her altered DNA. Max had sacrificed herself to the torture so that Melody might escape. She’d screamed for god knows how long on the operating table, until her voice went and her soul too.

And then there was footage of the raid. In it, she saw the unmistakable graceless running form of the Doctor. Her friend, and occasional defender, running in to save the day.

Except he entered the lab where Max lay, only half-conscious, bleeding and broken, and he ran away. He had stayed long enough to realize who she was, recognize the battered, bloody wings. And then he had heard something more interesting, turned, and run.

He ran away from her and she tried to call out for him, but with no voice, all that came out was an awful croaking whimper. Pitiful and helpless.

Kahler Tek had taken her to Jex’s ship to show her what she didn’t know, what would enrage her should she remember. That was why he had given her the chance to change her mind; he knew she might hate what she found.

She found hell, and she found her friend abandoning her in its deepest pits.

The Gunslinger was no monster. The real monsters were the ones standing in the same room as Max, daring to meet her eyes, with the full knowledge of what they had done.

“Bad stuff,” she said weakly.

She would never admit that, if she were to elaborate, she feared she’d cry.

“The Kahler war labs,” the Doctor deduced gently. He was looking at her, but she was no longer meeting his eyes. He kept studying her, though, even as she refused to watch him. It broke his heart, watching her grow up. The years on her face had taken her from child to young woman, but her eyes had far outgrown the rest of her. The Doctor realized, with a pang of guilt, that the expression she wore was one he knew well. It was the face of familiar pain, of tragedy that had come before and would certainly come again.

For once, he knew what she needed to hear.

“You deserve more than just surviving,” he said quietly.

Max’s gaze flicked up to him.

He continued, this time looking her in the eyes. “You don’t deserve any of this. Your life isn’t collateral damage, and I’m sorry I let it be. I’m sorry I didn’t save you.”

_ A Southern Belle with a bloodsoaked dress, whispering about the stars as she stopped breathing. A soldier at Demon’s Run, barely conscious after a monk’s sword pierced her, telling him she’d always wanted to meet him. An all-too-familiar voice guiding him through the Dalek asylum, facilitating her own demise. _

“I’m so, so sorry,” he repeated, his voice full of regret.

Max-- the first of her kind-- studied his expression with entirely too much scrutiny. He hated that she was so used to being hurt or lied to that she could barely understand kindness anymore. Eventually, she looked away again, focusing on Jex in the cell ahead of her. “What are we gonna do about him?” She asked, voice at its normal level of resilience.

She didn’t need to say it; he understood. They were good.

“We?” The Doctor asked, feigning surprise. “You need to sleep.”

Max rolled her eyes. “I slept yesterday. It’s time for planning now, so what are we gonna do to get him--” she jerked her thumb towards Jex-- “outta here without everybody getting nuked?”

“Well, I’d be a lot more concerned if a certain resourceful Avian American hadn’t stolen the blaster shells,” he joked, nudging her with an elbow.

She smiled, and he was almost happy.

Then he remembered Jex was in the room.

“Well, we know what the people of Mercy want,” he reminded them, finally piping up.

Max was, vaguely, glad that he’d been quiet so far. She didn’t want him knowing her business, even if she hadn’t cried. Yet.

“They want me to go for a desert stroll. You could turn a blind eye,” he tempted the Doctor, “no one would blame you. You’d be a hero.”

“Not everybody abandons their morals when it helps them out,” Max quipped bitterly.

The Doctor looked at her in surprise, taken aback by her wisdom, then got back to business. “Yes, and then Isaac’s death would mean nothing. He’d just be another casualty in your endless, bloody war.”

Jex’s expression almost seemed indifferent.

The Doctor’s temper flared. “Do you  _ want _ me to hand you over? Is that what you want? Do you even know?” He demanded, then turned and stormed away. 

Max remained at the desk, leaning her hip on top of it, posture relaxed. The Doctor wondered briefly how she, of all people, was keeping a cool head.

“You think I’m unaffected by what I did?” Jex countered, stepping towards the bars of his cell. “That I don’t hear them-- you,” he corrected himself, looking at Max, “screaming every time I close my eyes?”

“You’ll hear me screaming with your eyes wide open if you don’t shut up with the redemptive bull crap,” Max muttered, eliciting an unexpected chuckle from the Doctor.

Jex was miffed. “It would be so much simpler if I was just one thing, wouldn’t it? The mad scientist who made that killing machine, or the physician who’s dedicated his life to serving this town. The fact that I’m both bewilders you.”

The Doctor made a moment of eye contact with Max before whirling. “Oh, I know exactly what you are,” he snapped darkly. “You committed an atrocity and chose this as your punishment. Don’t get me wrong, good choice. Lots of adulation, civilized hours, nice weather, but justice doesn’t work like that. You don’t get to decide when and how your debt is paid!” 

Jex had laid down, turning to face away from them.

The Doctor still stood at the bars of the cell, glaring menacingly, until he was sure he’d hear no answer. He returned to the desk, with Max, about to suggest she run over to the inn and grab one of the high-calorie protein bars he had Amy carry for her, when Jex spoke again.

Max sighed when she heard his voice, clearly bored of the same old self-loathing.

“In my culture,” he said, “we believe that, when you die, your spirit has to climb a mountain carrying the souls of everyone you wronged in your lifetime. Imagine the weight I will have to lift.”

“Better start bench-pressing,” Max muttered half-heartedly, but no one laughed. Not even she smiled when she spoke.

Jex ignored her and continued. “The monsters I created, the people they killed. You, Archangel, and Isaac, too. Can you see now why I fear death?”

He rolled over to face them. Max refused to meet his gaze. “You want to hand me over,” he said to her. “There’s no shame in that. But you won’t,” he said, now to the Doctor. “We all carry our prisons with us. Mine is my past. Yours is your morality. Hers is her selflessness.”

Max scoffed. “Tell it to Amy, she was at my throat for being selfish with the Girl Scout Cookies last movie night.”

“We all carry our prisons with us,” the Doctor repeated thoughtfully. “Ha!”

It was high noon over Mercy.

Beneath the blazing gold sun stood the Doctor, Stetson on his head, gun belt around his hips. The bank loomed behind him, the clock ticking closer to the hour. There was hardly a sound in the town square.

In the chapel, the preacher knelt before the altar, whispering prayers to a god Max doubted was listening anymore. She waited at the back of the church, hair in double braids thanks to Amy’s nervous hands itching to get it out of her face.

Despite her attempting to dispel the rumors, most of the townspeople seemed to have concluded that Max was an angel. So when the Doctor had suggested she wait in the church and defend them, no one had protested.

The clock tower began its chiming.

Far away, Max heard the Gunslinger materialize-- just outside the town limits.

Two. Three.

The preacher begged for guidance in hushed words.

Four. Five.

A little girl whimpered.

Six. Seven.

The flesh-thin pages of a bible turned like whispers in the hands of a mother.

Eight. Nine.

Another materialization, and Max’s pulse kicked up another dozen beats per minute.

Ten.

The barber in his shop stood stock-still, holding his breath.

Eleven.

The Doctor stood in the town square like an old Western hero-- which, in this case, he quite literally was.

Twelve.

The Gunslinger appeared, a mere twenty paces away from the Doctor. Max clenched and unclenched her fist, hearing her heart pounding, feeling her blood simmer with adrenaline and oxygen. She felt herself becoming the weapon she was born to be, locked and loaded.

Then, explosions. There was a soft, muffled yelp from someone in the church as glass shattered in the square, cueing the distraction the Doctor had planned. Outside, Max knew the men had begun to run, all of them disguised as Jex, intending to draw the Gunslinger’s fire as the real Jex ran away.

She still wasn’t sure how she felt about him getting to survive this, no matter how much she preached forgiveness to Kahler Tek. As he fired in the square at anyone who reminded him of his maker, Max understood. She had fought the same way, like if she destroyed everything reminiscent of cages and evil and manipulation, she wouldn’t still see it all in her dreams. It hadn’t worked. Maybe there would never come a day when she didn’t return there in her nightmares, but she had to hope.

Still, she’d seen so many people walk free who didn’t deserve to.

Max’s thoughts were interrupted by a tug at her belt loop. She looked down, where a little girl in a brown dress stared up at her. There was no fear in her dark eyes, and no reverence. She seemed completely dismissive of Max’s wings. The child didn’t speak, just tugged, making it clear she wanted Max to get down to her level. Max obliged, ignoring the gunfire and the shouting, crouching beside the little girl.

She was surprised when, instead of asking a question, the kid simply hugged her. A lump began to form in her throat as she hugged her right back, squeezing gently. Max remembered hugging Angel the same way an eternity ago. Her heart ached like she’d put pressure on a bruise.

The girl let go of her, staring solemnly with her dark eyes. Max had the sense that she had given the hug for Max’s benefit instead of her own.

She looked nothing like Angel.

In the melancholy quiet, Max heard spurs jangling. Her muscles tightened in preparation for an attack. Someone was crossing the porch, hunting, and the shadow of the Gunslinger appeared on the opposite side of the window.

The child at Max’s side took a step back. Motion in her peripheral vision caught Max’s focus. She turned her head a millisecond too late to stop the little girl’s elbow from knocking a stack of precariously balanced bibles onto the church floor. The sound couldn’t have been as loud as it felt, but the ensuing silence was truly chilling. Max held up an outstretched hand, a silent plea to be still. 

When the rattling of spurs on beaten-up boots began to approach, she stood, mouthing,  _ get down! _ The townspeople did, cowering between the pews, and Max began to usher those who needed help towards somewhere safe. An old woman used Max’s arm to balance as she lowered herself to sit on the floor.

The window blew in with a deafening crash, sending glass shards flying into the chapel. Max snapped her wings open. The shattered window sent pinpricks of pain across her back, but the sensation simply reassured Max of her instincts. The glass that was now buried in her feathers would’ve been scarring the faces of the people she protected. 

“Maximum,” Kahler Tek murmured in awe. “You didn’t run.”

Max didn’t close her wings. She shrugged her shoulders once, shaking off any loose glass, and turned to face Tek. His gun was lowered-- clearly, he expected something else within the chapel. The sight of innocent townspeople cowering behind Max was enough to halt him-- at least for the moment.

She lifted her chin, raising her gaze from his weapon to his face. “It’s been said I don’t know when to quit,” she admitted. 

Tek’s form was silhouetted by the sun baking the sand outside, a brilliant outline to his misshapen body. Likewise, the refracted sun shone off Max’s face and feathers like heavenly light. Kahler Tek wondered what he must look like, in the eyes of the child clinging to Max’s leg. 

He steeled his jaw and focused his real eye on Max. “I know you took my blaster shells, but you can’t stop me.”

Max shook her head. “I’m not here to stop you. I’m here to protect them,” she explained, laying a gentle hand on the shoulder of the little girl. The child studied Tek with curious, yet unafraid, eyes. Max was no stranger to defending brave little girls, Tek knew all too well. She took a deep breath. “Don’t worry, I won’t keep you from your revenge.”

Tek turned to go, his footfalls heavy on the porch of the chapel.

Max’s clear voice rang out after him. “It won’t put the fire out, though.”

He stopped.

“Your anger,” she clarified. “Killing him won’t make it go away.”

Tek was silent for a long moment. Behind him, he heard Max’s light footsteps step through the hole in the wall of the chapel. 

“Then what will?” He asked, truly seeking answers.

Max swallowed hard. It was a question she’d asked herself a thousand times, and she still didn’t have a real answer for him.

“He’s gone,” the Doctor said, emerging from behind the chapel.

Kahler Tek flinched towards his weapon, turning on his heel.

“Wait,” Max protested, holding up a hand. Her gaze shot sideways to the Doctor, then back to Kahler Tek. “Wait. He’s trying to help.”

Kahler Tek, intrigued, paused. His gun-arm remained loaded.

The Doctor took another few steps towards him. “He’s going far away from here. Look up. Any second now, you’ll see the vapor trail of his ship.”

There was a long moment of quiet. Kahler Tek’s expression was unreadable. And then, in the blink of an eye, his gun-arm came up again. This time, it was pointed at Max.

“You lied to me,” he growled. “You said you wouldn’t keep me away from him.”

The Doctor’s hearts began to race. This could be it for this Max. He could lose her again, watch her die again. 

“Oh, my  _ god _ , are you kidding me?” Max whined. “I don’t wanna get shot two days in a row. I’m still sore from yesterday.” She rolled up her sleeve, revealing her scabbed shoulder. It looked more like she’d slipped off a skateboard than received a gunshot wound.

“Kahler Tek,” Jex’s voice crackled through the town square.

Tek lowered his gun, turning away from Max. 

The Doctor moved quickly towards Max, standing on the steps of the chapel in front of her. He didn’t enjoy standing aside while a gun was aimed at her. She didn’t acknowledge him.

“Jex,” Kahler Tek called, then realized his enemy wasn’t there in person. Max suspected he was broadcasting his voice from his ship. 

“Coward!” Kahler Tek shouted. “Where are you?”

“I’m in my ship,” came the distorted reply. 

The Doctor shook his head at the discussion. He shouted to the sky, “Jex, what are you doing? Just go!”

Jex didn’t reply, though he could obviously hear the Doctor’s yelling. Instead, he addressed Tek again. “Where are you from? Where on Kahler?”

“Now?” The Doctor cried. “You’re asking him this  _ now _ ?!”

“Gabriah,” Kahler Tek replied, ignoring the Time Lord’s shouting.

There was a brief pause as Jex considered the location. “I know it,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s beautiful there. When this is over, will you go back?”

“How can I?” Tek said. “I am a monster now.”

Another pause, longer this time. “So am I.”

The Doctor looked over his shoulder at Max, who was staring blankly in Tek’s direction. Her eyes were much too old for her face. The Doctor doubted Max’s mind was at all anchored to this place anymore. This was what their torture had done to her. This is what Jex had done.

“Just go,” the Doctor yelled, “finish this!”

“I’ll find you,” Tek swore. “If I have to tear this universe apart, I will find you.”

It was a threat Max herself had made before. She blinked, refocusing her eyes, and studied Kahler Tek’s stance. He was full of rage and bloodlust, not so far from where she once stood. He was ready to kill, and for good reason.

“I don’t doubt that. You’ll chase me to another planet, and another race will be caught in the crossfire.” Jex’s tone was thoughtful, almost mournful.

“Face me!” Tek roared.

“No,” Jex said. “You’ve killed enough.”

Quietly, so quietly that only Max could hear it, a computerized voice said, “Countdown to self-destruct resumed.”

“I’m ending the war for you, too,” Jex said solemly. His voice belonged to a man who was resigned to his end.

“What’s going on?” The Doctor demanded. “Jex?”

Max’s lips parted, but no sound came out. The savior of the world couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even breathe.

“What’s going on?” The Doctor demanded again, louder.

A shaky breath mingled with the faint countdown. Only Max knew what was coming, and she didn’t say a word. For once, the spitfire was silent.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Jex said anxiously. “But I have to face the souls of those I’ve wronged.”

The Doctor understood. 

Tek understood. 

Max, with a lump in her throat, finally found her voice. “Don’t do this!”

Jex, far into the desert, felt a tiny glimmer of hope. If the Archangel he’d tortured so mercilessly could find it in her heart to plead for his life, perhaps he wasn’t so damned after all. Jex thought of Isaac, of Sadie, of Walter, and sighed. These were the people he had saved, but those he had wronged awaited him. “Perhaps they will be kind,” he murmured.

An explosion ripped through the air. Black smoke billowed up in the hills, the remains of Jex’s ship torn apart. The townspeople began to emerge from the chapel to see the spectacle.

Kahler Tek bowed his head. “He behaved with honor, at the end,” he admitted. “Maybe more than me.” With that, he turned and sauntered away.

The Doctor took a few steps after him. “We could take you back to your world. You could help with the reconstruction.”

Tek didn’t stop, didn’t hesitate. “I will walk into the desert and self-destruct. I am a creature of war. I have no role to play during peace.”

Max opened her mouth to protest, but the Doctor got there first. “Except maybe to protect it.”

The jingling of Tek’s spurs stopped.

“All right, so our next trip!” The Doctor crowed, practically skipping out of the marshal’s office. “You know all the monkeys and dogs they sent into space in the fifties and sixties? You will never guess what really happened to them!”

Amy cut in, clearly trying to decline nicely. “Can we… leave it awhile?” She explained, “Our friends are going to start noticing we’re aging faster than them.”

“Just tell them you’re not wearing enough sunscreen,” Max suggested, squinting in the bright sunlight. “You’re so white you’ll wrinkle like a raisin.”

Amy made a face, but the Doctor interrupted before a quarrel could break out. “Another time, then. No worries.”

Max rolled her eyes. “Y’all are getting old.” Her dark eyes widened when she realized her unironic use of  _ y’all _ . Pursing her lips, she added, “I’m gonna go wash my mouth out with soap after this.”

Amy chuckled, waving goodbye to Walter and the preacher, then stepped into the TARDIS with Rory. The Doctor’s goodbye took the form of a mimed quick-draw with Walter, which he won.

Max was about to follow him into the TARDIS when Walter cleared his throat. She turned around, tilting her head. “Who you gonna buy soda for now? Sadie?”

Walter smiled sadly, brushing some dust off the shoulder of Max’s leather jacket. “Nah. I only do that for angels.”

Max was about to protest, but his hand on her shoulder turned into a tug. If she hadn’t ducked away, Walter would’ve landed a kiss right on her lips. Instead, he made it to her cheek. He pulled away with embarrassment written all over his face.

Max smiled. “Hey, it’s okay. People have a tendency to fall in love with me, all over time and space.”

Walter shook his head. “I wish you’d stay.”

“Can’t,” Max shrugged. “The future’s too bright. You’ll understand when you get there.”

She stepped into the TARDIS, then opened the door again after a mere moment. “Also, the future’s, like, really hot. As in, the entire planet is deathly hot to the point of everything dying. Turn out, gasoline is bad for the air. Humans, too.”

“Humans are bad for the air?” Walter asked, bewildered.

“No-- well, yeah, I guess. Humans with gasoline, specifically.”

Walter just blinked at her.

Max sighed. “Oh, I guess you’ll just have to learn the hard way. Whatever. It was worth a shot.”

With that, she shut the door, and it didn’t open again. The TARDIS dematerialized with its unmistakable sound, leaving behind only impossible stories and an aching heart.

_ By the time the Gunslinger arrived, the people of Mercy were used to the strange and unusual. Where he came from didn’t matter. As a wise man once said, America is a land of second chances. Do I believe the story? I don’t know. My great-grandmother must have been a little girl when he arrived. But, next time you’re in Mercy, ask soeone why they don’t have a marshal or sheriff or policeman there. We’ve got our own arrangement, they’ll say, and they’ll smile like they’ve got a secret. Like they’ve got their own special angel watching out for them. Their very own angel who fell from the stars. _

**Author's Note:**

> this is partially to test the waters about if there would be an audience for this! this crossover is completely lovelylogans' idea, but i begged to borrow this episode because i love it so much. let us know what you think!


End file.
